I read a very interesting (and good!) book recently -
Anathem, by Neil Stephenson, dealing with a very Earthlike world, but with many subtleties inside-out and upside-down from ours, such as the academic classes being cloistered rather than the religious (instead of ‘Saints’ they have ‘Savants’, though in their modern usage they say ‘Saunt’, for one example). In fact, it IS our world, just cosmically another ‘version’ and very well expressed by the occasionally-odd language used - like the combination of ‘anathema’ and ‘anthem’ in the title.
It specifically, among many others, deals with the notion that Plato’s ideas (like, to be very simplistic, there could be one cosmos for us and another for ideal isosceles triangles…but in this work there are many more possibilities - one of the major characters is in fact from OUR version of Earth), could be physically REAL and the possible implications about the nature of consciousness.
Some parts of it actually read much like Eco’s
The Name of the Rose, except oddly different, once again. I suggest trying it out - it’s fascinating, and there’s even a beautiful soundtrack on Stephenson’s site - a little like Gregorian chant, yet somehow not!.
Just a thought, since I can’t possibly make a forum post dealing with this in detail, although I might be able to get some specifics in there somewhere.
